Turner Family - Ourfolk

William was a convict, deported from England in 1731. As was common then, convicts were often given the option of deporting to a British colony in lieu of serving a prison sentence in England. It was a way to populate the colonies, and save the mother country from housing and feeding criminals.

What was his crime? you may ask. Chicken stealing. Not because he was hungry but because he was drunk. Around 11:00 pm, after a night of drinking with a couple of friends, he and two others went on a crime spree, stealing 31 chickens, roosters, and ducks, which they put into a stable and then convinced another man to fell them which I take to mean he killed them. The incident gave him a nickname . . . and a ticket to America.

However, upon arrival he likely had to serve several years as an indentured servant to pay for his passage. He arrived on the Fortune, a ship named for its captain, a man whose last name was Fortune. Captain Jonathon Fortune likely auctioned Chicken Bill and all the other convicts aboard to bidders as indentured servants upon docking on American shores. The Fortune crossed the Atlantic and sailed up the Rappahannock River, arriving in Fredericksburg, VA, a developing seaport at the time. Settlers had been arriving in the area since the 1600s, after the river was explored by James Smith (of Jamestown fame). Fredericksburg was founded in 1628, so at the time of Chicken Bill s arrival just three years later, the town consisted of little more than 50 acres and eight streets, all named for European Royalty, since this was an era still pre-Revolution and American independence. There were already huge plantations surrounding Fredericksburg and tobacco was its primary export, so that working the tobacco fields may have become Chicken Bill s labor for a few years, or perhaps he worked as a seaman as he had in England prior to the night of drunkeness that got him shipped to the colonies.

Whatever his labor was, William Chicken Bill Hacker had completed his period of servitude by 1738. On May 21 of that year, Bill married a woman who had been born in Ireland and had arrived in Virginia in about 1728. She may also have been an indentured servant, and may have been a widow as well. Her name was either Ann Turner Dillon or Ann Dillon Turner, hence the speculation that she had been previously married and likely widowed. The couple married in Overwharton Parish in Stafford County, just north of Fredericksburg, on the north side of the Rappahannock River.

Bill and Anne Hacker relocated for a time to a farm in Winchester, Virginia before moving on to the frontier of western Virginia, west of the Allegheny Mountains. They were among the first settlers to arrive in that still very wild land. William and Ann Hacker had two sons and three daughters. One of the daughters was Mary Hacker, my 6th great grandmother. The Hacker family settled on a creek that is still known today as Hacker s Creek in what is now Upshur County, West Virginia. Daughter, Mary, married a fellow named John Bush. The Hacker and Bush families were prominent early settlers to western Virginia arriving long before treaties with Native Americans. Two of Mary (Hacker) Bush s children were carried off by Indians. It is believed that William s wife Ann may have died in an Indian attack as well, making him a particularly vengeful Indian fighter. At some point, I ll write another post about the very interesting life of the Hacker/Bush families in Upshur County.

Prior to his felonious activity that lead him to be deported from England, William, like his father, John, was a seaman out of Dutch and English seaports. He spoke Dutch and English fluently. William was born in 1690 and was baptized on Jan 1, 1691.

Courtesy: Becky Foreman https://beckyforemantravel.com